“I’ll take Door Number Two—the less-nerdy version, if that’s at all possible.” I loved Stu, but his briefs were unintelligible when he went into full-blown Nerd Mode. Stu was in fact the humblest man I knew—shirt-off-his-back kind of guy, no question—and he was aces at commo, but he could put Adderall addicts to sleep when he got going on a technical discussion.
“Got it, Nat. I’ll try to keep it simple, but some of this shit is so complex that even I got confused.” He smiled at us, hoping we got his sarcasm. “I of course figured it out, but you guys are all screwed.”
Despite lacking the password to unlock even one of the phones we’d brought from Nantucket, Stu told us, he’d beenable to rip the contents off every single device.Holy shit—we have that kind of capability?
“It was interesting to me that there were so many burner phones in the pile found in Elise Courville’s house. Probably seven or eight, if I recall. Five hadn’t even been activated yet. No prints on any of them. Could be the ambassador used them as an easy security protocol when his daughter was traveling, in case she had to call her old man to discuss something important. I’ve heard the Speaker of the House does something similar with his kids, just to be on the safe side.”
Stu’s briefing continued: “You also picked a burner off the dead sniper, and there was one more at Harrison’s house among all the rest of the shit. While the numbers didn’t match for outgoing calls, the country code did: France. Makes sense given the circumstances with Courville and her dad, but it’s not clear why the intruder—and someone else at Harrison’s—was in communication with somebody in France. Could be coincidental … but I doubt it. Pretty clear that some bad guys here were talking to another bad guy in France.
“I’ve got a friend over at the NSA helping me work through some of the other protocols, and I’m pretty sure we can get more—just takes some time. He’s got all the gear from the yacht, plus the bag of computers that Si picked up at Courville’s, so once we connect, I’m sure more details will come out. It’s not a lot, but it’s a start.”
We had a hell of a lot more info than we did before.
CHAPTER 75
Moscow, Russia
The cold air blowing off the Moskva River made Alexander Egorov feel momentarily refreshed.
For sixty-three of his seventy-seven years, he had worked for himself. He’d been fourteen years old when his parents were taken from him during the famine of the 1940s, making young Alexander head of the house and de facto parent to his three-year-old sister. Raising her was a task that Egorov promised himself he would not fail at.
What started as petty theft for survival evolved with the times until Egorov was regarded as one of the world’s most powerful arms dealers. Weakness in his business was certain to get you killed. For five decades, Alexander Egorov had literally and figuratively dodged bullets, because he was tough and he had the will to survive.
Three hours earlier, his doctor at the JSC Medicina Clinic had delivered the news with a stony expression: Brain cancer.Inoperable. Six months—maybe. Egorov had laughed in the doctor’s face.
He did not fear death. He had always prayed that his would be a fast one—a bullet to the head that he never saw coming. So far, this prayer had not been answered. Despite all the decidedly bad things that happened in his line of work, he took very good care of his family and those close to him. As the cold wind blew, he smiled as he thought more of all the good he had done.
He could only imagine what his idiot sons would do once he was gone. As much as they disappointed him with their flashy lifestyles and their crass behavior, he loved them. They were smart and ambitious, but all too weak. This entire generation of Russians was weak.
Egorov turned to look at Natasha, his nurse, and Joseph, his chief of security. Even former soldiers like Joseph had soft hands. The two of them tugged on the collars of their overcoats, trying hard to hide their misery, both from the cold and the morning’s news. As long as Egorov wanted to stand outside, they would be forced to do the same.
He nodded toward the back door of his mansion. His compound in Rublyovka—western Moscow’s most prestigious residential district—shared Ostozhenka Street with the president and prime minister, as well as many Kremlin high officials and party members.
When Egorov was forced to come to the city, he lived here, in his luxurious seven-bedroom mansion. Had they been allowed to visit, photographers from the decorating magazines would have loved to shoot his French-style kitchen, his bedrooms modeled on a Swiss chalet, his bathhouse and indoor pool. Auto afficionados would appreciate his underground garage equippedwith Range Rovers for his security detail, the Bentley Arnage, and the obligatory Rolls-Royce Phantom, all jet black—and all armored, of course.
But no photographer would ever see the inside of any of his homes. Not while he was still alive.
As he made his way back inside, Egorov looked around his grounds, observing the dozen armed guards, the attack dogs, the cameras. Although he never took anything for granted, he was content that for the moment he was safe.
As the core members of his personal detail happily shed their heavy coats and enjoyed the warmer indoor temperatures, Joseph’s Iridium satellite phone chirped. The security chief carried several communications devices, all encrypted and capable of worldwide service. This particular phone was used by only one client.
Egorov heard the chirp, let out an audible sigh, and prepared to speak with the asshole in Paris.
“I am listening,” Alexander Egorov said evenly as he answered the phone. The conversation was short. Thankfully, the Algerian was not prone to small talk: He simply told his arms supplier which materials would be needed for the next phase of their operation.
The delicate but destructive explosive device was an interesting ask. Not unheard-of, but peculiar: It didn’t fit the pattern of the man’s customary purchases, which tended to be the garden-variety weapons and explosives that one would expect from a passionate but inexperienced terrorist. This new request was akin to leaving high school for a PhD program. It took the optics to an entirely different level.
Egorov lived by the simple rule that his clients’ goals werenot his business. He simply made transactions. He sold goods, not services. Remaining willfully ignorant of his clients’ objectives allowed him to sidestep pesky questions of morality. It also guaranteed that he could never be forced to reveal what he honestly didn’t know.
That said, he wasn’t naïve, of course. His own intelligence network was vast, and the dots between the exploded Nantucket ferry and the murdered United States senator were not hard to connect.
That his son Pavel had been off the island’s coast was not only reckless, but at cross-purposes with Alexander’s desire to remain detached. Egorov would try once again to beat it into his sons’ thick skulls that they must stay away from the scene of the crime—or the war, as the case may be.
Have I underestimated my client?Egorov wondered for a moment. But he trusted his gut: This idea had been generated by a third party. Haracat al Marrak was as passionate about his cause as the next guy, but in the end he was an imbecile.
Egorov made a mental note to speak to his niece and ask her what she knew.
Another attack in the US? Perhaps it would be necessary to leave the States altogether for a while. The boys could retreat to the house in Argentina, or the one in Montenegro.Anywhere else,he would insist when he arrived in Florida to tell them the news.
